


Eternity

by Ivillpunchyouinthethroat



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Death, Grim Reapers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 14:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat/pseuds/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat
Summary: Kim Wonsik meets death for the first time—far before his own time—on a busy Monday morning.Well, to be more specific, he meetsadeath of many.He meets a reaper.





	Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> As always, shout-out to the best human for helping me come up with this ^^

Kim Wonsik meets death for the first time— _far_ before his own time—on a busy Monday morning.

Well, to be more specific, he meets _a_ death of many.

He meets a reaper.

A reaper with porcelain pale skin and silk black hair and eyes bottomless enough that with only one glance, anyone would know.

This person was not _human._  

Kim Wonsik, however, did not seem to notice.

***

Taekwoon had been summoned to reap the soul of an elderly woman, her life soon to come to its most probable end and he’d chosen to take the scenic route, walking to her apartment instead of just materializing by the older woman’s bedside.

He’d walked through her apartment complex’s lobby and it had been a bustle of activity, the tenants walking to and from and just like normal, no one so much as sensed Taekwoon’s presence; subconsciously making their way around him as if he were a stone jutting up through a river of water.

He was a reaper after all, a single touch from him and death would take instant hold. The living avoided him by nature even if they did not realize it, even if they did not so much as see him.

That was what had always been, what Taekwoon had always believed.

Up until a human with dark hair and darker sleepy eyes that belied the aura of energy around him had come barreling down a hallway and straight towards Taekwoon, making absolutely _no_ move to avoid walking into him.

It was at the last possible second that Taekwoon had jerked to one side, shoulder slamming into the wall beside him—not that he felt any pain at the impact—and it was then that the human had turned to him even as he continued walking.

He’d turned and made eye contact and breathlessly said.

“Oh god, sorry—didn’t notice you were there, my bad!”

He’d barreled on after that and Taekwoon had just stood there stunned.

A human.

A human had seen him— _spoken_ to him.

Huh.

_Interesting._

***

Taekwoon does not know if he should be doing this, there was a reason the living had no business with death.

But there was also not a precedent, at least nothing that he knew of.

If there was no precedent then there were also no rules against it.

And Taekwoon was _intrigued,_ because the living did not see death—not until their time, or at least close to it—much less _speak_ to it.

So Taekwoon takes a deep (useless) breath in front of this unique human’s apartment door and walks on through.

***

The human reacts as any other human would react to a stranger materializing in their living room—

He screams.

He screams and his eyes are frightened as he practically summersaults backwards off of his couch. But Taekwoon only continues standing there and after the human’s initial shock disappears there is a sharpness that returns to his eyes, something cataloguing as he demands in a still shaky voice who the hell Taekwoon is.

Taekwoon does not flinch, he does not even change expressions, he merely states.

“I am death.”

The human surprises him once again because out of all the reaction Taekwoon had expected from him (terror being high on the list) laughter was not one of them, even if there was dash of panic in it.

“Uhh, I didn’t know death wore skinny jeans and a button up, aren’t you missing the black robes and the scythe and the whole….being a skeleton?”

“Reapers’ appearances change as the times changes, a few hundred years ago, maybe, the robes and the scythe would have made an appearance, as far as I know however, none of us were ever skeletons.”

“Us?” The human asks.

“I am one reaper of many.”

Something flits across the human’s face at the revelation.

“So you’ve come to reap my soul then?” he swallows visibly, “Is it my time up or something?”

“No,” Taekwoon answers, “you are simply the only human being in existence that I know of to be able to see and speak to me before your time and I am intrigued.”

The human looks at him, disbelieving, even if his grip on the couch is still achingly tense.

“You came here out of _curiosity?_ You decided to materialize in my living room, scare the shit out of me, tell me that you’re actually death fucking incarnate—all because you’re _curious_?”

Taekwoon’s answer is swift, unflinching.

“Yes.”

A strange mix of emotions spatter across the human’s face again but it all ends in an unstable chuckle once more.

“Prove it then,” Wonsik says, “prove to me you're death.”

Taekwoon quirks an eyebrow but obeys nonetheless.

Reaching over to the small potted plant on Wonsik’s coffee table he runs his fingers over the delicate green leaves.

In minutes the leaves have wilted. Wonsik’s eyes widen.

“Holy shit.”

Silence reigns until Taekwoon speaks once more. “My name is Taekwoon.”

The human looks up at him, eyes still wide.

“Wonsik, my—my name is Wonsik.”

***

Wonsik sees a lot of Taekwoon over the following days and weeks and months.

At first it’s rather amusing to see Wonsik’s reaction to Taekwoon materializing in his apartment at the most inconvenient times of day: when Wonsik is cooking, brushing his teeth, hurrying out of his apartment to his university—which, as Taekwoon had learned, was where he had been heading _very_ late to the first time he’d almost run into him.

Taekwoon learns much about Wonsik in that time, that he is a 22 year old rapper studying music production at his university, that he likes to read on his days off and would love to have a dog but can’t because his apartment complex doesn’t allow pets and on a student budget he can’t afford one that would. That he dreams more than anything else for his music to be heard, for his work to be recognized.

In turn Wonsik learns more about death than any still living (and a lot of the dead too) had any right to know.

That Taekwoon doesn’t know when or by whom he was created only that suddenly one day he just _was._ That he is a fairly new reaper, only having been at his job for about a hundred years when there were reapers who had been at it for _centuries._ That he had not told any other reaper of Wonsik and that he did not really know why.

(That had been a lie, he did know why, it was just that at that time, he had wanted to keep that fact to himself)

And as the time passes Wonsik grows used to him, rather quickly all things considered.

And it is Wonsik’s seemingly blasé attitude at having death in his apartment with increasing frequency, at not so much as flinching whenever Taekwoon appeared a safe distance away that intrigue Taekwoon even more.

“Are you not scared of me?” Taekwoon had asked one day, appearing across from Wonsik as he sipped coffee and worked on his music on a beat up old laptop.

“No, not really,” Wonsik had answered without even looking up.

“I could be coming to reap your soul one day. I am still death.”

Wonsik did look up a that, but only to smile at him, sleepy eyes crinkling in warmth, “Well, I figure that that time will come when it comes and that there won’t be much I can do about it either way and hey, if a reaper as pretty as you is the one doing to reaping, I don’t think I’d mind all that much.”

Something twists in Taekwoon’s belly at that, and he’s already puzzling over the sensation when Wonsik gives one of his little giggles.

“I didn’t know death could blush.”

Taekwoon’s eyes widen at the same time that he feels the unfamiliar sensation of heat at his cheeks.

He dematerializes in an instant but not before catching Wonsik throw his head back in laughter.

He carries the memory of that vibrant laugh for days even as he continues to reaps the souls of the living around him.

***

They grow closer, more familiar.

Taekwoon isn’t sure if it’s a good thing but it definitely feels like it.

***

“Can you touch, without reaping a soul?” Wonsik asks one day, unexpectedly—hesitantly.

“No,” Taekwoon replies, “I am death, and wherever my touch lingers, life leaves.”

“Oh,” Wonsik replies, doesn’t say anything else for a long time.

Taekwoon feels the pull of a reaping calling, is just about to dematerialize when Wonsik speaks up once again.

“I think—I think I was hoping that you could—that you could turn it off or something, even for a little bit—I would have—like to have touched…you?”

Only moments after he’d uttered the words Wonsik is groaning and burying his face in his hands, “Oh god that sounded fucking creepy didn’t it? Jesus Christ I’m being a creep to _death._ ”

He pulls his face out of his hands only to run one of them roughly through his hair. He’s carefully avoiding Taekwoon’s eyes, shoulders tense and cheeks red, looking instead to the floor below the couch they both sat on.

Taekwoon might not be human but he had wandered through the human’s world long enough to know what Wonsik’s words meant… what they _could_ mean depending on what he answers and—

He should leave.

Because he is death and Wonsik is human and there is no record of a human being having ever been able to speak to a reaper much less—

Much less have whatever had been budding between them in the months that they had known each other.

But there is no precedent, and Taekwoon’s belly swoops again and there is a heat at his cheeks as well as a feeling where a human heart should be but he isn’t even sure he _has_ —and he answers without thinking.

“I would have liked that too.”

Wonsik turns to him, smile awkward and unsure but bright nonetheless.

“Oh—good,” he says, “That’s, uh, good.”

Taekwoon disappears right afterwards, but he can see his return is already expected in the shine of Wonsik’s eyes and the curve of his mouth.

He also knows with certainty that he _will_ return, doesn’t think he will be able to keep away from Wonsik for any extended period of time anymore.

Not after this.

***

Wonsik’s younger sister comes to visit one day, bringing a vase full of flowers with her to “give some life to your dead ass apartment” to quote her own words.

Taekwoon had materialized in a corner and watched the exchange—one that was really more friendly bickering than anything else—between siblings happen in silence only to materialize once again at a safe distance behind Wonsik, just to check if maybe his ability to see death ran in his family.

His sister had no so much as blinked.

And so it’s a few days after that that Taekwoon is caught staring at those same flowers. A few had barely begun wilting while others were still as fresh as when his sister had first brought them over.

He brings a hand up to hover over the freshest of the satin petals but he never actually makes contact. It’s then that he notices Wonsik makes his way over and he retracts his hand quickly.

Wonsik gives him a look, his eyebrows alone posing a question.

“They are beautiful,” Taekwoon supplies.

Wonsik only keeps quiet besides him.

A week later Wonsik corners him in his living room. “Here,” he says, cheeks once again red.

Taekwoon stares at the small bundle in Wonsik’s hand.

“I cannot touch that Wonsik.”

“Yes you can, it’s dried, so it’s already dead. You don’t have to worry about that and you—you can touch it this way.”

Taekwoon brings a hand up slowly, grabs the plastic covering around the dried rose from Wonsik’s hand—making sure to not so much as go near Wonsik’s own hand—and brings it close to his chest.

Ever so gently he brings another hand up, a single finger just barely skimming over the rough dried petal.

Nothing happens, as Wonsik had said the rose was already dead.

Taekwoon looks up and smiles, a smile big enough and bright enough to match Wonsik’s own, one that he’s sure he’s never had cause to indulge in before.

 Over the next few weeks, Wonsik’s apartment is soon littered with dried flowers.

***

 “So what happens, after we die?” Wonsik asks as he lounges on his couch, Taekwoon sitting before him on one of his kitchen stools, answers promptly.

“I do not know.”

Wonsik bolts upright in an instant, voice incredulous, “Wait, what do you mean you don’t know! You’re death, you are literally _death,_ isn’t this kind of your job?”

Taekwoon lets a corner of his mouth lift up just a fraction at Wonsik’s bewilderment.

“Reapers are nothing more than glorified messengers Wonsik. We gather your souls and deliver you to the gate but that is the extent of our job. Beyond that, where your soul goes or to _whom_ it goes, I don’t know. None of us do.”

Wonsik flops back down on his couch with a huff.

“So you’re just as clueless as the rest of us mere mortals then? Well that’s some fucking bullshit,” he grumbles, “I have actual death as an unofficial roommate and I can’t even ask the good shit existential questions.”

Taekwoon can’t stop the full smile that graces his features at Wonsik’s outburst and if he lets out a small chuckle, well, none of the other reapers need know.

***

“Do you… _like_ being a reaper.”

“I neither like nor dislike it, it is my purpose, why I was created.”

“Okay, but if you could like, go back and choose, whether to be born as a reaper or not, would you still choose to be a reaper.”

“…no…I don’t think so. I think I would have liked to be human.”

“Oh.”

***

“So what _exactly_ happens when you reap a soul?”

“When I reap, I dislodge a soul from its living vessel. The vessel, now without a soul, dies.”

“And the soul…is it still sentient, even outside its body?”

“Yes—”

“So it’s basically still alive then, just…not in a body anymore.”

“…yes. Up until it’s delivered to the gate, after that, as I said, I do not know what happens.”

“But before it’s delivered it just kind of… exists on whatever plane you do.”

“In limbo, it exists in limbo.”

“Huh.”

***

“Do souls just not age in limbo?”

“No, but they are not supposed to remain there beyond the time it takes a reaper to deliver them to the gate.”

“ _Has_ a soul remained there though?”

“Not really, no.”

***

Taekwoon notices gradually—only _lets_ himself notice gradually—until one day, realization falls over him like ice water.

How could he have been so blind.

Death was his work, he presided over it, how could he not have seen that even in life Wonsik wasn’t _living—_

Not anymore.

He was just waiting to die.

***

“So then, _theoretically,_ a soul _could_ exist in limbo, without passing the gate, right?”

“….it doesn’t work like that Wonsik.”

“But you said that it _hadn’t_ happened not that it _couldn’t_ happen _._ You also said that a human like me hadn’t happened either, and yet here I am talking to you.”

“Wonsik there... _have_ been souls who have refused enter the gate—”

“Hey! You told me there weren’t—”

“But a soul is not _meant_ to remain in limbo, if they refuse passage through the gate the first time, they’re barred from ever crossing again. And apart from that, the souls who have refused they—they don’t remain in limbo for long. They remain eternal and unchanging as the world around them changes. They see as all that they loved disappears with the passage of time and eventually—there’s just no reason left for them to exist anymore. They begin waning until ultimately one day they just vanish.”

“But all a soul would need then is a reason to keep existing, right?”

 “That’s never happened Wonsik.”

“…yet.”

***

Taekwoon knows what he must do but the knowledge is painful, and it weighs and weighs on him, settling like lead in his chest where he was now fairly sure a heart did exist after all.

So he knows and he stalls and it is not until the day that Wonsik turns to him and says _—_ after not so subtly tiptoeing around it for _weeks_ —

“Taekwoon, so what if…what if I chose death, _willingly_ , now?”

Something cracks inside of Taekwoon.

“Wonsik that—you—you’re _alive,_ you have an entire life left you can’t just—not for—not—”

Wonsik interrupts and there’s determination in his eyes, the same determination he has when he’s creating music, the kind of senseless determination that Taekwoon knows will hold against _anything_.

“The life I have now isn’t one I can share with you, not really. I can’t touch you, I can’t _be_ with you, I’ll live the rest of my life growing old and you’ll stay the same and if you—if you would just touch me, it would be painless right? And I would exist in limbo with _you_ —”

“Wonsik did you hear nothing of what I said, a soul in limbo atrophies, loses its sense of self—of _existing—_ and then it just _fades_ away—”

“Yes but that only happen if a soul no longer has a reason to keep living, because the world moves on and everything they loved moves on with it—but that wouldn’t be the case for me Taekwoon because what I love, it’d be existing right there alongside me. I could have an eternity with you Taekwoon.”

Wonsik’s words hit Taekwoon like a physical blow, words he’d found he wanted to hear and words that he’d never wanted to have fall from Wonsik’s lips.

“So would you—would you touch me? _Please?_ ”

Taekwoon does nothing but stare and the pain in his heart is agony and he’s sure now, that this is what a broken heart feels like.

It’s at that exact moment that Taekwoon chooses.

Even if—even if what Wonsik said held true, even if by some miracle he _was_ able to remain in limbo, if he could hold onto his sense of purpose (his _love_ ) for an _eternity—_

He was still human, and as a human he had an entire life left to live, his most probably end was nowhere near arriving.

Taekwoon could not deprive of that, _would_ not deprive of that.

No matter how much he loved him in return.

Not when Taekwoon knew that this was a decision he could never back out of, one that he could come to regret and that would most likely cause Wonsik a true death.

Wonsik is still staring at him, resolve still hard in his eyes, and he’s just opening his mouth, just taking a breath to speak—

Taekwoon disappears without waiting to hear the rest of his words.

***

It is simple.

A day later Taekwoon rematerializes in Wonsik’s living room, much in the same place he had first met him.

Wonsik is sat upon his couch and Taekwoon cannot stop himself from saying his final words of parting, couldn’t have stopped himself even if he’d tried.

“Wonsik, I am a reaper, I am death incarnate, and never in my existence have I ever experienced that which my touch takes so easily.”

Wonsik smiles at him even as his eyes show a strange mix of confusion and curiosity at Taekwoon’s words.

“But meeting you Wonsik—” Taekwoon pauses, a strangeness in his voice that Wonsik easily picks up on, brow already wrinkling in concern.

“Meeting you is closest thing I have come to living.”

Wonsik’s eyes light up then, and his smile only grows as Taekwoon’s hand begins to rise.

He stands up hastily and they’re close, close enough that Taekwoon can see the burning glare of hope rush through Wonsik’s eyes and there is already a question beginning to form on his lips—

But Taekwoon does not touch him, no matter if that was what Wonsik expected—what he _wanted_.

He merely uses the same power that allows him to separate a soul from its body to separate Taekwoon’s memory from Wonsik’s mind.

Wonsik flinches and blinks and—

He sees nothing.

Wonsik stares ahead and he sees nothing and it is only a second before the human shakes his head as if to clear it and walks completely around Taekwoon, avoiding him like every other sightless human did.

Taekwoon stays with his hand raised for a long time.

It _hurt._

***

Wonsik lives.

He meets people, men and women alike but they come and go and Taekwoon cannot stop the fierce spark of triumph whenever they do.

It is irrational, he knows, was precisely the reason he’d chosen to erase his existence from Wonsik’s mind; but it seemed that like so many of the other things Taekwoon had come to learn upon meeting Wonsik, death could be an irrational being as well.

***

There is a man Wonsik meets who stays much much longer than anybody else had up to that point.

They love each other, truly, that much Taekwoon can tell by eyesight alone even if the fierce ache in his chest had not been enough—but they were also too alike in all the wrong things and too different in all the right ones.

They parted, mostly by mutual agreement but in had been an angry volatile thing, with pain and tears and the resentment of knowing that what they had could never have worked even if what they felt was genuine and real.

The man had walked out of Wonsik’s life and Taekwoon had never seen him so distraught; it had taken half a year for Wonsik to be truly okay again.

***

He meets someone else a year later, a girl with long dark brown hair and wide sparkling eyes, and she is warm and beautiful and she is nothing like death.

Nothing like _him_.

She is young, like Wonsik, rash at times but kind and open and she burns bright and _alive—_ in every sense of the word—and she—

She is everything Wonsik has ever needed.

Taekwoon watches as they begin their friendship, as they slip into something more, tentative and unsure at first but strong and fierce within months.

It is easy to see how Wonsik could love her, easy to see how he ends up planning a life with her.

They marry within a few years and maybe it is wrong of Taekwoon but he cannot stay away and the day Wonsik’s daughter is born Taekwoon is there to see the look on Wonsik’s face the first time he holds his daughter in his arms and if death could cry, he would have.

Taekwoon had already knowns this, had known it for _years,_ but this—

 _This,_ was why he had let Wonsik go.

So he could _live._

***

Taekwoon actively interferes in Wonsik’s life only once.

A human’s path through life was never linear, it was never a straight shot from being born directly to their death. Although there _was_ a more or less main path that every human traveled there were a hundred different paths of possibility and eventualities branching away from that main road. Some branches were more probable than others and they shifted constantly depending on the decisions each human made in their own lives.

So Taekwoon had known even upon his first meeting with Wonsik all those years ago that in Wonsik’s thirty-ninth year of age he would come to such branch, a fork in the road, so to speak.

A fork in which one path meant an early death and the other meant a continued life and in theory Wonsik should have had an equal chance at both.

When Taekwoon had chosen to set Wonsik free all that time ago he’d thought that maybe—just _maybe—_ if Wonsik ended up choosing the darker path in that instance then they could have—

Could have—

But no.

Not anymore.

Wonsik had a daughter who thought he hung the moon and the stars and Taekwoon would not deprive either of them of a life together.

So, Taekwoon interferes in Wonsik’s life only once _._

As he sees Wonsik choose the darker path, he gently and unknowingly steers him towards the light of life.

And as he sees Wonsik successfully avoid his own death that day, he feels the heart he still carries with him break all over again.

***

It’s been a lifetime.

A lifetime of watching Wonsik live and grow and age further year by passing year.

A lifetime that’s now coming to an end.

When it is time, Taekwoon materializes in Wonsik’s room to find him asleep amid the weak glow and faint beeps of machines all around him.

By then, his death had been long foreseen and Wonsik had chosen to wait for it not in the sterile cold of a hospital but among the familiarity of his home instead.

His daughter, now with a few grey hairs of her own sits slumped and asleep in a chair pushed up against a corner. Her two children—Wonsik’s grandchildren—slept at home with their father.

His wife had passed many years ago already, taken by another reaper and Taekwoon had made sure that she had not so much as glimpsed him.

He takes another moment to just look at Wonsik, but he’s already stalled long enough and slowly, he starts walking towards Wonsik’s bedside. Once there, once he’s close enough to touch, he lifts his pale hands, hovering them over the skinny frame that used to once be his Wonsik, now withered and lined with age but no less recognizable as the man he never stopped loving.

His hands hover and Taekwoon waits but with a deep breath he finally lowers them, pale cold hands slipping into Wonsik’s body and gently displacing his soul.

It unhinges easily, Wonsik’s soul, as if it had already known that its time was near but Taekwoon hesitates before pulling it apart from his body completely for he does not know what form Wonsik will emerge as.

Would it be as young as he’d once met him, younger, or would he emerge as he is now?

Taekwoon takes another useless breath and pulls, feels Wonsik’s soul warm and solid in his hands, pulls until Wonsik hovers above his own body, face unlined once more and as young as when they’d first met each other all those years ago.

Time stands still as Wonsik’s soul hovers and does not open his eyes.

It took a while sometimes for a soul to awaken in death and it seemed Wonsik was no exception.

It feels like Taekwoon waits another lifetime before Wonsik’s eyes flutter and then creak open and once again Taekwoon finds himself holding a breath he did not need.

But Wonsik opens his eyes—and even in their fogginess they hold a single emotion startlingly clear, the same one they’d held when Wonsik had told Taekwoon that he chose him, that he was willing to bet he would _always_ choose him, an emotion that Taekwoon had desperately missed for a _lifetime—_ and smiles and says,

“I remember you.”

Taekwoon might be the first reaper in existence to ever shed tears (he had not even known they could) but all he can do is let them fall, smile back and say.

“I’m glad.”

He buries his face in Wonsik’s chest just as the sobs start coming, deep noisy things that sound like they’re all but being torn from his chest and if it weren’t for the all-consuming relief of having Wonsik remember him—of having Wonsik finally _look_ at him again—he’d marvel at the sensation of it, of the agony of having watched over Wonsik’s life manifesting itself in such a physical form.

He’s still weeping when he feels Wonsik shift beneath him and suddenly there is a hand at his hair and its touch is soft, tentative, but Taekwoon could not have stopped himself from leaning into it if he’d tried.

Wonsik was _touching_ him, after everything, he could finally _touch_ him. Even if here and now Wonsik chose to pass through the gate, even if he no longer held the love for Taekwoon he once had—it was worth it just for this, to be able to feel Wonsik, if only for a moment.

But Wonsik is no longer hesitant after that, hand carding through death’s dark hair as Taekwoon looks up with watery eyes.

“It’s just as soft as I’d always imagined,” he says, small smile gracing his features. His hand slips down from Taekwoon’s hair to his cheek, thumb running gently across the tear tracks there, beginning to wipe them away.

“I lived a lifetime Taekwoon,” he says, and his smile is a little sadder then, bittersweet almost, “you let me have that, but I think—”

He pauses, meets Taekwoon’s eyes, the same determination there that Taekwoon had seen years ago present once again to match the budding smile at his lips.

“I think I’m ready for eternity now— _our_ eternity.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell at me about Wontaek, or kpop, or just anything really at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/JhopeKoreanJesu)


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